Enterprise AI ROI Study: 82% Report Positive Returns

Why This Enterprise AI Study Matters for ROI Decisions

Nathaniel Whittemore, host of AI Daily Brief and CEO of Superintelligent, presents the first results from what may be the largest grassroots study of AI ROI in organizations. With 2,500+ self-reported use cases from 1,000+ organizations, this data cuts through the speculation about whether enterprise AI is actually working.

On the current state of adoption: "You actually are seeing pretty meaningful uptake of agents inside the enterprise... it's jumped from 11% in Q1 of this year to 42% in their most recent study for Q3." This KPMG data shows agent deployment has nearly quadrupled in 9 months—not experiments or pilots, but production agents doing real work.

On where ROI concentrates: "You see a real cluster between 1 and 10 hours, especially right around 5 hours. If you save 5 hours a week or 10 hours a week, you're talking about winning back 7 to 10 work weeks a year." The unsexy truth: most value isn't transformational—it's saving a workday per week, which compounds to months of recovered capacity annually.

On agents dramatically outperforming: "Where those use cases mention certain types of automation or they mention agents, they wildly outperform in terms of the self-reported ROI from them." Agentic use cases show 4x higher transformational impact rates than the average. This is the data behind the "year of agents" narrative.

On the surprise category: "Risk reduction is our lowest category in terms of the percentage of use cases... But it is by far the most likely to have transformational impact—25%." Compliance, risk, and audit use cases represent only 3.4% of submissions but deliver transformational ROI at the highest rate. The unsexy back-office functions may be AI's biggest opportunity.

On the leader-lagger bifurcation: "One of the things that tends to distinguish the companies that are leading is that they are just doing more of it... they're thinking about their strategy as a whole... they're doing multiple things at once." The correlation is clear: organizations with more use cases report higher ROI per use case. Systematic adoption beats spot experiments.

6 Insights From the Largest Enterprise AI ROI Study

• 82% report positive ROI - 44% see "modest" returns, 38% see "high" returns; only 5% report negative ROI on their AI investments
• Agent adoption quadrupled in 9 months - Production agents in enterprises jumped from 11% to 42% between Q1 and Q3 (KPMG data)
• 5 hours/week is the sweet spot - Most time savings cluster around 5-10 hours weekly, translating to 7-10 work weeks recovered annually
• Agents dramatically outperform - Use cases mentioning agents or automation show significantly higher transformational impact rates
• Risk reduction is underrated - Only 3.4% of use cases target risk/compliance, but 25% of those report transformational impact—the highest of any category
• More use cases = higher ROI - Systematic, multi-use-case adoption correlates with better outcomes per use case

What This Means for Enterprise AI Strategy

This study provides the first broad-based data on where enterprise AI is actually working. The answer: everywhere, but especially in agents. With 42% of large enterprises now running production agents (up from 11% nine months ago) and agent use cases dramatically outperforming in ROI, the "year of agents" thesis is being validated by actual organizational outcomes. For companies still experimenting, the data is clear: stop spot experiments, think systematically, and don't overlook the unsexy back-office functions where AI may deliver the highest transformational value.